Andr Bazin's Ontology of Photographic and Film Imagery Author(s): Jonathan Friday Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and

Art Criticism, Vol. 63, No. 4 (Autumn, 2005), pp. 339350 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3700510 . Accessed: 12/05/2011 03:28
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JONATHAN FRIDAY

Andr6Bazin's Ontology of Photographicand Film Imagery

First and foremosta film critic and championof cinematic realism, Andr6 Bazin is generally recognizedas one of the most important figures in the history of film aestheticsand his writings on film are universally acknowledged to have influenced a generation of filmmakers, critics, and theorists.Indeed,Bazin is just one of a small numberof important theoristsfrom the past who, althoughtheir influence has not entirely waned, have already been sufficiently superseded by new methods and approaches that they have come to be referredto as "classical"film theorists. Yet his statusas a theoristof the still photographis vastly different.The short article upon which this reputation is based continues to inspire some of the most influentialwork in the aesthetics of photography,and constitutes the starting point for much modem photographic theory. Stanley Cavell, Rudolf Arnheim, Susan Sontag, Kendall Walton, Patrick Maynard, Roland Barthes,Ted Cohen, and Roger Scruton arejust a few who, in theirwritingson photography, have echoed to a greateror lesser degree themes more or less explicitly Bazinianin sympathy and outlook.' Each of these writersreach quite different conclusions about photography and each, togetherwith the entire Bazinianconhave been broughtunder ceptionof photography, extensive critical scrutiny.What has rarelybeen given the attentionit deserves is Bazin's actual in argument his seminal 1945 essay entitled"The Ontology of the Photographic Image"(hereafter OPI).2GregoryCurrieand Noel Carrollare two notable exceptions, but both misinterpret Bazin on the way to dismissinghis position.3

of I will returnshortly to the interpretations Bazin's thought presentedby these two critics, but it will be helpful if we begin by considering the intellectual and methodological context in which the argument of OPI is framed. The source of much misunderstandingof Bazin's argumentis the failureto take notice of both the explicitly stated perspective from which he approaches his explanation of the distinctive nature of photographicrepresentation,and the implicit methodological assumptions of his argument. Throughout OPI, Bazin repeatedly indicates that he is considering photography from a psychological perspective. As we will see, this means two things:first, he is concerned with the impact that the particularprocess by which photographsare made has on beliefs and attitudesregardingphotographicrepresentation. This is a first-orderpsychological account of the significance of photography in terms of human responsiveness to the kind of material sign a photographis. Second, his perspectiveon photography is psychological in the secondorder sense of positing an underlying human need thatis in partresponsiblefor the first-order psychological responsivenessto photography. Failureto take notice of the implicitmethodological assumptions of Bazin's argument has been the source of critical misunderstanding. When Bazin announcesin his title that his concern is with the ontology of the photographic image, we rightly take him to mean that he is concerned with the nature,or being, or distinctive identity of the photograph.Bazin's intellectual orientationwith regardto ontology is not, however, that of a philosopher in the analytic tradition who might, for example, appeal to

63:4 Fall 2005 TheJournal AestheticsandArtCriticism of

340 identity conditions as the basis of determinations of an object's nature.For Bazin, ontology is a topic addressedphenomenologically,and it is a reasonableassumptionthat his phenomenoto logical methodbearssome relation thatdetailed in It by JeanPaulSartre BeingandNothingness. is known, for example, that Bazin very carefully readSartre's earlier Psychologyof theImagination and was deeply influenced by the connection indicated there, and later developed in Being and Nothingness, between art and ontology.4 We do not need to suppose that Bazin accepted and employed Sartre'sphenomenologicalontology in all of its detail and dimensions, but the announced concern of OPI with ontology and the thrustof his argumentindicate the influence of an at least broadlySartrean phenomenological method. The simplest characterization phenomenoof logical ontology sees this method as the attempt to grasp and understand the contents of the world throughan investigation of the way they presentthemselvesto consciousness.To discover what a thing is, to grasp its being, is to give a lucid description of its appearance to consciousness. These appearancesof things to consciousness reveal both what is and the intentional natureof what is. To explore the ontology of the photographic image is therefore to explore how photographspresentthemselves to consciousness, and to reveal their nature by careful description of what they are for us in experience.It is temptingto say thatthe implicit assumptionof this method of ontological investigation adds a thirdpsychological dimension to Bazin's investigationof photography.Consider, for example, the following gloss on Sartre's ontology by Hazel Barnes, distinguishing it from the ontological assumptionsof Berkeleian idealism and Cartesianrealism: "Consciousness does not create materialbeing, and it is not-as consciousness--determinedby it. But in revealing being, consciousness introducesdifferentiation, and signification. Consciousness bestows meaning on being."'5Differentiation, significance, and meaning-the phenomenological nature and identity of a material object-is bestowed or projectedonto materialbeing, and this is a psychological explanationin the broadest sense of the term. Failure to take notice of the broadlypsychological orientationof Bazin's theory of photographic representation leads

The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism some of his interpretersinto misunderstanding what he is in fact defending. This will become apparent when we turn to the interpretations offeredby CurrieandCarrollof Bazin's position.

Bazin devotes the first half of the essay to an account of the evolution of the plastic arts through the invention of photography.It is in this part of his argumentthat Bazin introduces and explores the second-order psychological need that plays such an importantrole in his account of photographicrepresentationin the second half of OPI. In Bazin's account of the evolution of the plastic arts, this need is identified as the driving force behind their genesis and development. This is signaled at the outset of OPI when he writes: If theplasticartswereputunder the psychoanalysis, of the out practice embalming deadmightturn to be a in factor theirgenesis... Thereligion of fundamental ancient death,saw suragainst Egypt,aimedentirely existence the of on vival as depending the continued a material body. By providing defenceagainstthe psychopassageof time it satisfieda fundamental a time,for logicalneedin mankind: defenceagainst deathis but the victoryof time. To artificially preit is servebodilyappearance to snatch fromtheflow of time... The first Egyptianstatute,then, was a mummy.6 The fundamentalneed that gives birth to the plastic arts is that of cheating death and securing a continued spiritual existence, and it' is originally answered by the embalming of the corpse to preserveit againstthe effects of time. Soon, however, the Egyptians realized that all their preservationtechniques provided insufficient securityagainstthe eventualdestructionof the body. However, the continued need to defeat time led them to place statues of the deceased in the tomb to serve as substitute bodies for those souls whose embalmedbody is destroyed.Bazin comments on this story of the birth of the plastic arts in a struggle against death:"Thusis revealed, in the origins of sculpture its primordialfunction: to preserve being by means of its representation.' Many of the elements of this account of the origin of the

Friday AndrdBazin's Ontologyof Photographicand Film Imagery are plastic arts in "magic identity-substitutes" not original to Bazin. We need not trace their origin to all the influences on Bazin's thought, but the extent to which he is echoing ideas he found in Andrd Malraux's anthropological theory of arthistory is worthnoting. Bazin was a great admirerof Malraux'swritings and at the time he began writing OPI he is reportedto have said that he "wantedto do for cinema what Malraux had done for art... to show its social function emerging from deep psychological necessities."8For Malraux,these necessitiesunderlieart'sevolving social function through successive periods of human history, the characterof which continuallyreturnsin the cyclical unfolding of art history. This dialectic of transformationstructuringthe history of art and aesthetics is adaptedfrom G. W. F. Hegel's theory of art history, and echoed by Bazin in OPI. Like Malraux, and indeed Hegel, Bazin takes the first of these periods to be the ancient Egyptian,when art's functionwas thatof sacred identity-substitute.This period gives way to that of ancient Greece, which Malrauxtakes to be the period when art is characterizedby the impulse to immortalize, and thus make divine, the contents of the natural world through the of representation their appearance.This in turn gives way to the Hellenistic period, in which art becomes profane, valuing the reproductionof the world's appearance its own sake.9These for stages proceed cyclically through history, but the various manifestations of the impulse to defeat time that each one represents remain within the subconscious of mankind and thus continually exercise an influence on the psychology of the arts.As Bazin remarks: Civilization cast out the bogey of cannot.., entirely time.It canonly sublimate concern our withit to the level of rational No thought. onebelievesanylonger in theontological of identity modelandimage,butall are agreedthatthe imagehelpsus to remember the him subjectandto preserve froma secondspiritual death. (OPI, 10) p. How it manifests itself may change as civilization and the arts evolve, but what remains constant is the deep psychological need to "have the last word in the argument with death by means of the form that endures"(OPI, p. 10). And therefore, Bazin writes: "If the history of

341

the plastic artsis not solely concernedwith their aesthetic, but primarilywith their psychology, then it is essentially the history of resemblance or, if you want, of realism."'1To achieve true realism, paintershave to combine and balance a concern for the symbolic representation of "spiritualrealities" with the pursuit of resemblance, and the greatestartistshave always been capable of achieving the right balance. They allot "to each its properplace in the hierarchyof things, holding reality at their command and moulding it at will into the fabric of their art" (OPI, p. 11). But from the moment artificial perspectivewas rediscoveredduringthe Renaissance, artistsbegan to give greateremphasis to the reproduction appearance of until "bitby bit, it came to dominatethe plastic arts"(OPI,p. 12). For Bazin, like Malrauxbefore him, this consuming interest with appearancesrepresents a fall from the divine character of ancient and late-medieval art into the profane art of the Renaissance, and sowed the seeds for "a great spiritualand technical crisis" in painting (OPI, p. 10). For with the dominationof painting by artificial perspective, painting becomes torn between two ambitions: "One, primarily aesthetic, namely the expression of the spiritual realities wherein the world is transcendedby a symbolism of form; the otherbeing nothing but the wholly psychological desire to replace the exterior world with its copy."11Despite their occasional reconciliation in the greatest art, there is a tension between these two representational ambitions. The search for verisimilitude of appearancedepends on an artist employing skills and techniquesto fool the eye of the spectator into taking the picture for what it represents. This deception standsuncomfortably with that other aim of realism, which is to reveal the deeper truthbehind mere appearance.It is as if, in orderto achieve verisimilitudeand reveal the world for what it is, the paintermust rely on the deception that the picture gives us the world as it appears.Deception, however, is a poor ally to call on if one's task is to representthe real and the true. Bazin draws on that tradition that sees the conflict between these ends of art being played out in many guises and that came to a head in the mid-nineteenthcenturywith the debate over the value of realism and the entireconceptionof art as the accurateand truerepresentation the of

342 naturalworld. He is also perfectly aware, writing in the dominant modernist atmosphere of his day, that realism was deemed to have lost the argument.Indeed, many of the arguments against photographyas an art form still prevalent in Bazin's day were really reworkings of the arguments against realism. These arguments, and indeed the entire debate about the value of realism, are, for Bazin, based on "a confusion between the aestheticand the psychological." A confusion, that is, "[b]etween true realism, the need, that is, to give significant expression to the world both concretely and its essence, and a pseudo-realismaimed at fooling the eye (or for that matterthe mind); a pseudorealism content in other words with illusory appearances"(OPI, p. 12). Indeed, far from being the reductio ad absurdum of realism, photographyis the return to true realism, and the liberator of painting from pseudorealism. The obsession with likeness that led painting into pseudorealism,rooted in the psychological need to preserve the world throughembodying it in copies, is transferred the mediumof photo tography. For not only does photographygive us true realism, thus restoring that value as a ideal,it is also the case that"photography pictorial and the cinema.., are discoveries that satisfy, once and for all and in its very essence, our obsession with realism"(OPI, p. 12). Photography is the redeemer of realism and liberatorof painting, not because it produces truer likenesses of the world, but because of the "psychological fact" that the process of photographic production gives a quality of realism to the resulting photograph that decisively satisfies our need for identity-substitutes. Bazin's position here is complex and in need of careful analysis. Photographs definitively satisfy the deep psychological need for representations that preserve the being of their objects, and this constitutesa fact about human beings explained by our awareness of the process thatproducesphotographs.That process of productiongives "significantexpression to the world both concretely and in its essence," thus satisfying the need for realistic reproductionin a form that achieves the aesthetic significance of true realism. The need is satisfied, therefore, becausephotographs the productof a particuare lar "mechanical" "automatic" or processwhereby the world reproduces itself, thus escaping

The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism the subjectivemediationinevitablewith painting. "This production by automatic means," Bazin observes, "hasradicallyaffected our psychology of the image," which is to say our beliefs about, and attitudes toward, photography have been radically influenced by our awareness of this distinctively objective mode of picture making.12 In what ways we will shortly discover, but this is the point at which we should turn to Currieand Carrollto see how the failure to take this psychological perspective of photography into account in interpretingBazin's argument leads to a distortion of his views. We can complete the account of Bazin's argument in correctingthese distortions.
1III

of GregoryCurrie'sinterpretation Bazin is both cursory and dismissive, attributing to him a position that is patently absurd. Currieclaims, first, that Bazin denies that photographs are representations, which raises the immediate question of what he imagines the nonrepresentationalalternativeto be. Currie'sansweris that in contrast to representations,photographsare of "presentations" their objects. This constitutes Currie's second claim about Bazin's position, that he groupsphotographstogetherwith lenses and otheraids to vision as imagery that "present the world to us rather than representing it." Continuing this theme, Currie writes: "If we take Bazin at his literal word...a photographof X is, or is partof, X... when we are in the presenceof a photographof X, we are in the presence of X." Notice that the two claims Curriemakes aboutBazin's position are closely related. The first attributesto Bazin the denial that photographs are representations,and the second attributesto him a positive account of if what they are in contrastto representations; the first claim is false then so, too, is the second. It is certainly true that Bazin distinguishes between two modes of representation,one of which might properly be called "presentational." But that does not imply a distinction between two kinds of things: representational picture and presentational reflection. To see where Currie's interpretation of Bazin goes wrong we need to start with this false and distinctionbetween the representational the

Friday

Andrd Bazin's Ontology of Photographic and Film Imagery

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an objector being, but more exactly its trace.Its automatic it fromthe genesisdistinguishes radically other techniquesof reproduction. photograph The proceedsby meansof the lens to the makingof a veritable luminous in extend our epistemic access to impression light-to a mould. Representations with thingsin the world;if they arereliable,representa- As suchit carries it morethanmereresemblance, tions give us information aboutthingswhen those namelya kindof identity.17 to thingsarenotreadilyaccessible us. Andfor some A superficialreadingof this passage might suga purposesa description, detailedpictureor some otherkindof representation be moreinformative gest that Bazin is making a very sharp distinccan than a directperceptual examination the thing tion between representations founded on of itself... Other devicesenhance perceptual our access resemblanceand a nonrepresentational concepto thingsthemselves. Lenseshelpus see detailinac- tion of photography as a tracing or mold of cessibleto thenaked No onewill say,I suppose, light. On closer inspection it is clear that Bazin eye. that lenses give us representations things.They thinks the invention of photographyintroduced of aids to vision. They presentthe world a new kind of representation-an intermediary are, rather, rather representing between the presence of an object to the senses than it.14 and its complete absence. The invention of the mechanical process of photographyintroduced The problem is that the qualities that are supa kind of image that not only represents its posed to distinguishpresentationsare precisely of the sort that are claimed to be distinctive of object in the manner of ordinary representational resemblance,but also distinguishes itself representations. Mirrors, photographs, and from the usual forms of such picturingby being other lens imagery may indeed be used to in addition a tracing of patterns of light enhance perceptual access to things and thus reflected from its object. To put Bazin's point act as aids to vision. But these are qualities perin terms he does not use, paintings represent fectly suited to extending "epistemicaccess" by iconically, but photographsare the coincidence providing information in just the way that is purportedly distinctive of representations. of the representationalcategories of icon and index. Photographs are indexical in virtue of Indeed, although Bazin certainly thought there the causally generatedmechanism of their prowas a certainanalogy between mirrorsand photographs, he claims the latter are particularly duction,but they are a special kind of index that valuable because they give us the world as we points to its cause iconically, or by picturing that cause. There are, then, two modes of repreneither ordinarily experience it, nor could experience in any other way.'" Photographs sentation, the iconic and the iconically indexical, and there is not, as Currie suggests, a may constitute a representationalkind distinct in importantways from other modes of iconic distinctionbetween representation and a differbut they are no less representa- ent category of thing. representation, If Currieis mistaken in supposingthat Bazin tions for that reason. And Bazin writes nothing to suggest he thinks otherwise. believes photographsdo not represent,then he must likewise be mistaken in the positive Indeed, in OPI he explicitly refers to the account of the alternativeto representationhe and persons in photographs being objects attributesto Bazin. At the very least, his failure In effectivementre-prisentd.'"l6 a "reprdsente, to see that Bazin is describing a mode of reprelater essay, however, there is a passage that at sentationleads Currieto misunderstand Bazin's first glance might suggest Bazin has something like Currie'sdistinctionin mind. He writes: claim that a photographand its object share "a kind of identity."According to Currie,Bazin's Before the arrival of photography and later of identity thesis should be understoodin its literal the cinema, plastic arts... weretheonlyintermediaries sense to be claiming that a photograph"is, or is betweenactualphysicalpresence absence, and their part of" the object causally responsible for its was theirresemblance creation. For nothing less would be consistent which stirs the justification and But imagination helpsthememory. photography with the view that photographsdo not represis altogether ent. Literally, a photograph and the object it other. at all theimageof Not something presentational.Currie draws his distinction in terms of another between epistemic enhancement and visual access. He writes:

344 presents are in some sense or other the same thing, or at least the material convergence of sign and signified. This view is so strange and implausible that it is difficult to imagine anyone seriously holding it-but particularly Bazin, who observes that "[n]o one believes any longer in the ontological identity of model and image" (OPI, p. 10). There is, however, another passage that might be thoughtto supportCurrie'sreading of Bazin. Hugh Gray, Bazin's translator, rendersit thus: "The photographic image is the object itself, the object freed from the conditions of time and space that govern it...it shares, by virtue of the very process of its becoming, the being of the model of which it is the reproduction; it is the model" (OPI, p. 14). This often quoted passage is one of Hugh Gray's more misleading translations of Bazin's text.18 The immediate context of the passage is Bazin's discussion of the difference between painting and photography as modes of representation, with this discussion being itself part of his exploration of how the automatic process of photography has "radically affected our psychology of the image." After observing that painting is an "inferior technique" for reproducing appearances,the passage that Grey mistranslates occurs. Here is a more literal renderingof Bazin's words. Thelens alonegives us an imageof the objectcapable of bringingback to consciousnessour deep unconscious fora substitute anobjectthatis need for more than an approximate transfer:namely, the of object itself, but freed from the contingencies its time.., the imageactsuponus through originin thebeingof themodel;it is themodel.19 Gray's translation has Bazin making a claim about the substantialnatureof the photographic image, whereas the original text indicates that in fact he is observing one of the psychological effects of the photographicmode of representation. In particular,that photographsremind us of our deep primordialneed for a representational preservationof objects and persons from the influence of time. Why this happens is explained in partby our awarenessof how photographsare related to reality in the process of their production,and in partby the natureof the need. The need is to preserve the object itself

The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism from time, but this is a difficult need to satisfy if the only means of doing so are representational identity substitutes. The subjectively mediatedand approximaterepresentation the of appearanceof the world that painting provides was only satisfying before the invention of photography provided an alternative mode of representation in which the relation between image and object is more direct and intimate. Photographs approach closer to the psychological ideal of the identity of image and object because they are made by a process in which patterns of light reflected from an object are encoded and reproducedwithout the intervening involvement of mankind.This photochemical connection between image and object both reminds us of, and more adequately satisfies, our need for identity-substitutes. Bazin characterizes the direct and intimate relation between a photographand its object as the sharingof "a common being" and "akind of identity."We should rememberthat within the psychological perspectivein which this identity thesis is formulated,these are characterizations of responsive attitudes to a kind of picture produced as photographs are through the mechanical encoding of patterns of reflected light. Our awareness of this process leads to a certain conception being formed of a closer connection between image and object, but the beliefs and attitudesthat constitutethis conception are also conditioned by the need for imagery that satisfies a deep desire for identitysubstitutes. Bazin's identity thesis is therefore both psychologically and phenomenologically oriented. Phenomenologically in the sense that the identity thesis characterizes how photographspresentthemselves to consciousness and the meaning we project onto them. Psychologically in that this projectedmeaning is itself conditioned by the deep need for identitysubstitutes that preserve their objects from the effects of time. Indeed, if one subtracts from Bazin's account of his identity thesis its broadly psychological dimensions, all that is left is a materialdescriptionof the photochemical process by which photographs are made. But Bazin is clear that his identity thesis involves a conception of photography in part informed by our awareness of this process, but not reducible to either that awareness or the material process. It should be emphasized,

Friday AndrdBazin's Ontologyof Photographicand Film Imagery however, that it is the photochemical process alone that produces the beliefs and attitudes characterizing the identity thesis. So Bazin remarks:"The image may be blurred,distorted, discoloured and without documentary value, but still it acts upon us throughits origin in the being of the model."20The process by which they are made, and not the resulting appearance of photographs,is the importantfactor in determining the medium's psychological effect. An important feature of the psychological characterof Bazin's identity thesis is revealed by the analogy he draws between the kind of identity that relates the photograph and its object, and the kind of identityrelatinga fingerprintto its unique cause. Bazin does not expand on the analogy, but it is worth reflecting upon. The context of its introductionis anotherof the contrasts he draws between painting and photography. The frame of the painting encloses a world mediated by the mind, and therefore"a substantiallyand essentially different microcosm."The photographand its object, by contrast, "share a common being, after the fashion of a fingerprint" (OPI, p. 15). If a fingerprint shares a common being with its unique cause, and does so because the manner of this cause is the imprintingof flesh to surface analogous to the imprinting of an object onto film by means of reflected light, then the shared being must have a psychological character.For taken by itself, the process of imprinting that creates the fingerprintand photographis one in which the world causes these representational signs. If this were all Bazin's identity thesis amounted to, then it would be extravagantto call it an identity thesis at all. In fact, the heart of the identity thesis is the description of the psychological response to indexical signs produced in the mannerof an impressionof object to surface. Without confusing cause and effect, we treat photographyas if it shared a common being with its cause: conceiving of, responding to, and describing the photographas if it were its cause. This is not an illusion, but an intentional attitude conditioning our experience of photographs and providing a context in which the claim that, for example, "the image is the object" has its significance. Needless to say, this position is far removed from the materialidentity thesis that Currie attributesto Bazin.
IV

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Noel Carrollpresents a much fuller analysis of Bazin's argument in OPI than Currie, but although it displays a better understandingof some features of Bazin's position, his interpretation is similarly flawed by his failure to take note of the psychological orientation of the argument. Carroll's failure in this regard is quite strikingbecause he is alive to the importance in general of a psychological dimension to Yet he faults the explanationof representation. Bazin for defending a theory of photographic representationthat, Carroll tells us, "proposes itself as a physical analysis without psychological dimensions."21Having overlooked the psychological orientation of OPI, Carroll's understandingof Bazin's position is unsurprisingly mistaken. Unlike Currie, Carroll does not doubt that Bazin is defending a theory of photographic representation.Indeed, he takes Bazin to be defending a version of the copy theory of representation formulated to avoid the powerful objections to the standardformulationof such theories in terms of resemblance.According to the standard view, a picturerepresentsits object in virtue of visually resembling it. One of the problemswith such cruderesemblancetheories, of and Carroll'sinterpretation Bazin's response to it, is neatly summarizedby Carrollthus: For Bazin, a film has existentialimport.It is a that of re-presentation something existedin thepast. how something Here the problemof establishing can resemble something threetwo-dimensional with is dimensional putatively bypassed theassertion The film imageis the model of perceptual identity. to identical themodel.)22 is, (That is perceptually One partof this claim is misleading and another is simply a false account of Bazin's position. of Carroll's understanding Bazin's identity thesis being formulatedin sharpcontrastto resemblance theories is misleading. Bazin does not exclude the notion of resemblance from his account of photographic representation, but instead denies that this feature has any role in bringing about the psychological effects of this mode of picturing. Indeed, in Bazin's story of the evolution of the plastic arts,paintingis freed from its "resemblance complex"by photography,

346 to which it abandons the aim of reproducing similar appearances.Painting gives up on the resemblances,or naturalisticfiguration,but not because photography achieves greater verisimilitude of appearance.Indeed, as Bazin notes: "Photographywill long remain the inferior of paintingin the reproductionof colour" (OPI, p. 12). Rather, photographybecomes forever the medium of pictorial resemblances because of the way that resemblance is produced by the photographic process and the psychological effects of such a mode of picture making. Bazin's account of photographicrepresentation is therefore focused on how a certain class of resembling imagery has a more intimate connection with the objects it depicts than do other kinds of pictures because of the process that producesthem. In itself it is hardlya significant misreadingof Bazin to suppose instead that he formulateshis theory of representationin contrast to resemblance theories. However, that misreadingleads Carrollto a significant misunderstandingof Bazin's identity thesis. The connection arises because the only interpretation of the relation between photographs and their objects that sharply contrasts with perceptual similarity is perceptual identity-which is exactly the view Carroll wrongly attributesto Bazin. It should be noted that the notion of "perceptual identity"could be interpretedin a number of ways. Some of these will be returnedto, but given that Bazin does not employ perceptual concepts in his argument,the range of options for understandingperceptualidentity with any foundation in Bazin's text are extremely limited. Carroll'sinterpretation takes its inspiration from the metaphorof the mold that, as we have seen in the passage quoted earlier, Bazin employs to characterizephotographs-writing that they are "the taking of a luminous impression.., to a mould,"and therefore"more than a mere resemblance, namely a kind of identity."Carrollis rightto identify this passage as importantfor understanding Bazin's identity thesis, and the analysis he gives of the metaphor of the mold is in large part accurate.Because, however, Carroll is looking for a notion of perceptualidentity, and is not aware of the psychological orientationof Bazin's argument,he draws an incorrect conclusion regarding the identity thesis from the mold metaphor.We can

The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism see Carrollmaking this mistake when he writes of thatmetaphor: I takeit thatit mustreferto the rawfilm stock.The of metaphor film stock as mould,it seems to me, the specifiesthe way Bazinconstrues identityrelation between the model and the developedfilm boththe imageand image.Thatis, the mould"fits" the model... One way of unpacking this.., is that of Bazin's identityclaim holds that patterns light with pertinent fromthe imageareidentical patterns of lightfromthe model,whichalso servedas causal of in factors theproduction theimage.23 Carroll is certainly right that Bazin considers patterns of reflected light focused through the lens as the impressing force on the film mold, from which castings can eventually be taken in the form of prints. However, in Carroll's "unpacking"of this metaphorof the mold we find him led into error by his failure to take notice of the psychological orientation of Bazin's argument. Carroll's understandingof Bazin's identity thesis supposes this relation holds between the patterns of light reflected from a photograph and those reflected from the object constituting the imprinting force that created the photoBazin's identitythesis in this graph.Interpreting way is no doubt why Carroll believes Bazin's theory of photographic representation is "a physical analysis without psychological dimensions." But insofar as Carrollsupposesthe identity between image and object Bazin proposes is to be found at the materiallevel of patternsof of reflected light, his characterization the idenas perceptualis puzzling. At the same time, tity insofar as Carroll takes the identity to be perceptual, he introduces a psychological dimension to his readingof Bazin's argument.In fact, there is little in Carroll's argumentto explain his characterizationof the identity as perceptual, given that he consistently gives a material account of the identity relation. Thus, at one point, he writes in criticism of Bazin that "it is not enough to show that the image and a model deliver identical patterns of light to a station The fact that identical patternsof light point."24 are reflected to an abstracted light-sensitive "stationpoint" is the full extent of the perceptual character of the identity thesis Carroll attributesto Bazin. This is hardlya distinctively

Friday Andr6Bazin's Ontologyof Photographicand Film Imagery perceptualconception of identity. What would constitute a distinctively perceptualreconstruction of Bazin's identity thesis is worth exploring, but first it must be emphasized that Carroll'serroris not primarilythe characterization of the identity thesis as perceptual, but ratherhis direct association of that thesis with the underlying photochemical process of photography.As we have seen, this process is part of the cause of the psychological response to photographsin termsof which Bazin formulates his identity thesis. The patterns of light reflected by a photographand its object are not identical,but even if they were, it would still be a mistake to suppose this materialidentity has any greatersignificance in Bazin's theory than as the materialcause of a psychological effect. It is worth briefly considering how Bazin's identity thesis might be reconstructedin terms of the notion of "perceptual identity."Although Carroll gives little clue as to what he understands by perceptualidentity, there are several ways of interpreting the notion. One rather extravagantway would have it that the perceptual experience of looking at an object photographically represented is identical to the perceptualexperience of looking directly at the object. However, there are far too many differences between looking at objects in photographs and seeing those objects directly to take this interpretation A seriously.25 more moderate interpretation of perceptual identity would claim that, notwithstanding the many differences just alluded to, it is neverthelessthe case thatin looking at a photographone is in genuine perceptual contact with the object causally related to the photograph. According to this view, an object representedphotographicallyis literallyseen by means of, or through,the photograph,and this perceptualrelationshipis identical in kind, if not phenomenally, to seeing the object directly. This position on photographic representationis neither Bazin's nor Carroll's, being instead influentially championed by Kendall Walton.26 It is worth noting that Walton'sposition,if not his argument, shows the influence of Bazin, appearing to be a reconstructionin perceptual termsof Bazinianrealism. However odd the position may initially appear, Walton's argumentis both subtle and compelling, with its soundness dependenton complex issues in the philosophy of perception.27

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A third and final interpretation the notion of of perceptualidentity understandsthis relation psychologically, as a response to photographs with its origin in the imagination,whereby they are treatedin some respects as if they enable us to see the objects they represent. This reconstructed position is consistent with Bazin's account of the automatic productionof photographs to a mold by the impression of patterns of reflected light. The awareness of such a material characterization of the process of productionmight be sufficient to explain why we treatphotographsas if they made the object perceptually present for us. But a better explanation of our psychological responses to photographic representation would combine awareness of the process of their production with the effect of their optical appearanceand its relationto perceptualappearances. Needless to say, this is not the position Carroll attributes Bazin. Nor, however, is it Bazin's position-not least because Bazin does not conceive of his identity thesis in perceptual terms, and the reliance on how photographs look to explain their realism is thoroughlyunBazinian. Because he formulates the identity thesis from a broadlypsychological perspective, Bazin does not need to invoke specifically perceptualconcepts in his explanationof photographic realism. Instead, he employs the psychologically-orientednotion of presence, which can be supposedto have a perceptualdimension without that being sufficient for its explanation. Moreover,to isolate the perceptualaspect of the psychology of the photographicimage from the other beliefs and attitudes that constitute the data from which the ontology of the photographicimage is drawncan only ultimatelydistort Bazin's meaning.
v

When Bazin's position is recovered from the we kind of misinterpretations have been considwe are in a better position to consider it ering, critically and reach a fair estimation of its worth.Ratherthan do this with any depth,I will close with a few very generalcomments. of The argument OPIhas some featuresworthy of retentionand others that are more doubtful. His view that human beings have a deep and

348 primordial psychological need to find substitutes for real things that can be presented to consciousness as preservingthem in some form is certainly a doubtful hypothesis. It is not that the psychological need is doubtful, since the existence of magic identity-substitutesin the past and the lingering symbolic remainsof such attitudessuggest such a need can be identified. Rather, what is doubtful is the role that Bazin gives to this need in determiningthe psychological effects of the photographic image. The existence of such a deep need for identity-substitutes and the desire to embalm objects from the effects of time are unnecessary features of Bazin's psychology of the photographicimage. On the other hand his characterizationof the automaticprocess of photographyas the making of a picture to a mold, together with the psychological examinationof the effects of this mode of representation,remain valuable clues to understanding realism. photographic WhetherBazin is right to wholly exclude the distinctive appearanceof photographsfrom the explanation of their psychological effect is another questionable feature of his argument. The issues here are large and complex, but at root the questionis whetherthereis any sense to the claim that photographs reproduce the appearanceof things in a manner sufficiently similarto their appearance perceptualexperiin ence to justify that feature of the medium having a role in bringing about the psychological effect Bazin describes. What can be said with confidence is that this effect cannot be explained in terms of such a similarity of appearancesalone. It is, as Bazin emphasizes, awarenessof the causal origins of photographic representationin reflected light that first and foremost informs our sense of photographic realism. Nevertheless, there is a pressing issue here in relation to Bazin's argument,not least because he relies on such a notion of perceptual resemblance when drawing his conclusions aboutthe aesthetic qualities of photography.He writes, for example, that "[t]he categories of resemblance distinctive of the photographic image also determine its aesthetic character in contrast to that of painting. The aesthetic qualities of photographyreside in its revelation of the real."28At the level of aesthetic value at least, the appearance of the world in photographs, and not just knowledge of how

The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism photographsare made, constitutes an important part of Bazin's realism. This is perhapsunsurprising, but it suggests there is room for doubtof ing his claim thatthe appearance the world in photographsplays no partin the explanationof the distinctiveness of photographicrepresentation or its powerful psychological effects. If significantly blurred or distorted photographs have no aesthetic effect because they prevent reality revealing itself to us, why should they have any psychological effect either? How could a viewer be supposed to treat such a photograph as if it shared its being with the unidentifiableobject of which it is a trace?This is perhaps a point at which the postulated psychological need to preserve being against the effects of time holds too great a sway over Bazin's thought. There are two furtherworries about Bazin's position that deserve to be briefly indicated, both of which arise from the sense that he is attributingto all photographs what is true of only some. First, Bazin's claim aboutwhere the aesthetic qualities of photographyare located, as well as the normative implication that photographersshould respect the realism constituting the specific nature of their medium, is highly doubtful.Why Bazin holds this anachronistic view circumscribingthe possibilities for an aestheticallysignificantphotographicartis a complex matter, better left to another occasion.29 The importance of the point, in this context, is that Bazin ought to have recognized the limited explanatoryscope of his argumentto what is sometimes called "straight photography." Second, it is doubtful that the experience Bazin describes of spectators identifying the image and its object is the only kind of experience we have of photographs,ratherthan just one of many possible psychologically informed responses. Roland Barthes's descriptions of looking at photographsvery often exemplify a Bazinian psychology of the photographic image, such as the following remarkfrom the beginning of Camera Lucida: "One day quite some time ago, I happenedon a photographof Napoleon's youngest brother,Jerome, taken in 1852. And I realized then, with an amazementI have not been able to lessen since: 'I am looking at eyes that looked at the emperor.'"30It is highly doubtful that this is the only, or even a typical, experience we have when looking at

Friday AndrdBazin's Ontologyof Photographicand Film Imagery

photographs. Nevertheless, it is one important sort of experience of photographs, and Bazin more than anyone else saw its significance and helped us to understand it.
JONATHANFRIDAY

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History and Philosophy of Art University of Kent Kent CT2 7NX Canterbury, United Kingdom
INTERNET: j.friday @kent.ac.uk 1. Stanley Cavell, The World Viewed (HarvardUniversity Press, 1979); Rudolf Arnheim,"On the Natureof PhoCriticalInquiry1 (1974): 149-161; SusanSontag, tography," On Photography (Harmondworth: Penguin Books, 2002); Kendall Walton, "TransparentPictures: On the Nature of PhotographicRealism," Critical Inquiry 11 (1984): 246and 277; PatrickMaynard,"The Secular Icon: Photography the Functionsof Images,"TheJournal of Aestheticsand Art Criticism42 (1983): 155-170; RolandBarthes,CameraLucida: Reflections upon Photography,trans. RichardHoward (London:Flamingo, 1984); and Ted Cohen, "What'sSpecial aboutPhotography," Monist71 (1988): 292-305. 2. Andr6 Bazin, "The Ontology of the Photographic Image," in What is Cinema, vol. 1, trans. Hugh Gray (University of California Press, 1971). David Brubaker's "Andr6 Bazin on Automatically Made Images," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism51 (1993): 59-67, is an exceptional instance of a careful study of an aspect of Bazin's argument. 3. Gregory Currie,Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and CognitiveScience (CambridgeUniversity Press, 1995); and Nodl Carroll,Philosophical Problems of Classical Film Theory(PrincetonUniversityPress, 1988). 4. See Dudley Andrew, Andrd Bazin (Columbia University Press, 1978), p. 70. 5. Hazel Barnes, "Sartre's Ontology," in The Cambridge Companion to Sartre, ed. Christina Howells (CambridgeUniversity Press, 1992), p. 25. 6. On several occasions in this paper I have altered Gray's translationof Bazin's text to bring it closer to the French original. For the failings of Gray's translation,see note 18 below. When substantial alterations are made to Gray's translation,the French original is also provided. For the text just cited, the original text reads: "Une psychanalyse des arts plastiques pourraitconsidbrerla pratique de l'embaumement comme un fait fondamental de leur genise... La religion 6gyptiennedirig6etout entibrecontre la mort, faisait d6pendrela survie de la p6rennit6mat6rielle du corps. Elle satisfaisaitpar 1kh un besoin fondamentalde la psychologie humaine:la d6fense contre le temps. La mort n'est que la victoire du temps. Fixer artificiellement les apparencescharnellesde l'&tre c'est l'arracherau fleuve de la dur6e." Andr6 Bazin, "Ontologie de L'Image in Photographique," Qu'est ce Que le Cindma?(Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1994), p. 9. Hereafter,the French text of OPI will be distinguishedby the designationOPI-f.

7. "Ainsi se r6vhle, dans les origines religieuses de lastatuaire, sa fonction primordiale: sauver l'8tre par l'apparence"(OPI-f,p. 9). 8. Andrew, Andrd Bazin, p. 68. Bazin would have encounteredMalraux's thought about cinema in "Esquisse d'un Psychologie du Cin6ma," Verve 5(2) (1940), translated as "Sketchfor a Psychology of the Moving Pictures" and collected in Reflections on Art, ed. Susanne K. Langer (Johns HopkinsPress, 1958), pp. 317-327. 9. Finally, art enters an era of decadence in which the plastic arts seek to satisfy the need to cheat death, but through a representationalart concerned with an ideal of adornedreality, a substituteworld temporallyindependent fromthis one. See Andr6Malraux, "Museum WithoutWalls," trans.StuartGilbert(New York:Pantheon Books, 1949). 10. "Si l'histoire des arts plastiques n'est pas seulement celle de leur esth6tique mais d'abord de leur psychologie, elle est essentiellement celle de la ressemblanceou, si l'on veut, du r6alisme"(OPI-f, p. 10). 11. "D6sormais la peinture fut 6cartel6e entre deux aspirations:l'une proprementesth6tique-l'expression des par r6aliti6sspirituellesoh le modile se trouvetranscend6 le symbolisme des formes-l'autre qui n'est qu'un d6sir tout psychologique de remplacer le monde ext6rieur par son double"(OPI-f, p. 11). 12. The passage continues:"Theobjectivity of photography confers on it a powerful credibilitywholly absentfrom other pictures.Whateverthe objections of our critical spirit, we are compelled to believe in the existence of the object (OPI, p. 11). "L'objectivit6de la photographie represented" lui confhre une puissance de cr6dibilit6 absente de toute oeuvrepicturale.Quelles que soient les objections de notre esprit critique nous sommes oblig6s de croire i l'existence de l'objet repr6sent6" (OPI-f, p. 13). 13. Currie,Image and Mind, p. 51. 14. Currie,Image and Mind, pp. 49-50. 15. Bazin, "Theatre and Cinema, Part 2," in What is Cinema,p. 97. 16. Bazin, OPI-f, p. 13 17. Bazin, "Theatreand Cinema, Part Two" in What is Cinema,vol. 1 (Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1971), p. 96, emphasis added. The original reads: "Jusqa'hl'apparition de la photographie puis du cin6ma, les arts plastiques, surtout dans le portrait, 6taient les seuls interm6diaires possibles entre la presence concrkteet l'absence. La justification en 6tait la ressemblance, qui excite l'imagination et aide la m6moire.Mais la photographieest tout autrechose. Non point l'image d'un objet ou d'un htre, mais bien plus exactement sa trace. Sa genhse automatiquela distingue radicalement des autres techniques de reproduction. Le de photographeprochde,parl'interm6diaire l'objectif, o une v6ritable prise d'empreinte lumineuse: h un moulage. Comme tel, il emporte avec lui plus que la ressemblance, une sorte d'identit6." Bazin, "Th6atreet Cin6ma 11" in Qu'est ce Que le Cindma? (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1994), p. 96. 18. The failings of Gray's translationhave been extensively noted. See, for example, Brubaker,"Andr6Bazin on Automatically Made Images," p. 66, n. 4; and Richard Roud, "Andr6Bazin: His Fall and Rise," Sight and Sound 37 (1968): 94-96. 19. "L'objectif seul nous donne de l'objet une image capable de 'difouler,' du fond de notre inconscient, ce

350
besoin de substituerh l'objet mieux qu'un d6calqueapproximatif: cet objet lui-m~me, mais lib6r6 des contingences temporelles"(OPI-f, p. 14). 20. "L'image peut etre floue, d6form6e,d6color6e, sans valeurdocumentaire, prochdepar sa genise de l'ontoloelle (OPI-f, p. 14). gie du modble;elle est le mod61e" 21. Carroll,Philosophical Problems, p. 132. 22. Carroll,Philosophical Problems, p. 127. 23. Carroll, Philosophical Problems, p. 126. Carroll acknowledges that his interpretationattributesto Bazin a position that is never explicitly statedin OPI. 24. Carroll,Philosophical Problems, p.133. 25. See Richard Gregory, Eye and Brain (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966); and J. Snyderand N. Allen, "Photography, Vision, and Representation," Critical Inquiry2 (1975): 143-169. 26. KendallWalton, "Transparent Pictures." 27. See Jonathan Friday, Aesthetics and Photography (Aldershot,UK: Ashgate Press), 2002.

The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism

28. "Les cat6gories de la ressemblance qui spicifient l'image photographique, d6terminent done aussi son la esth6tique par rapport A peinture. Les virtualit6sesth6tiques de la photographie r6sident dans la r6v61ationdu r6el"(OPI-f, p. 16). 29. Noel Carroll argues in Philosophical Problems, pp. 135ff., that the normative dimension of Bazin's realism is built on the mistaken belief that a supposed essence of a medium determines its specific nature,determining how it can and cannot be used to make art. There is certainly some truthin this diagnosis, but it is far from the whole story. The natureof Bazin's normative conclusions about photographic art are conditioned by his views on the significance of the appearance of photography in the unfolding of art history, and by his belief in the power of photography to redeem reality from the "piled up preconceptions" that he believes alienate us from the world we inhabit. 30. Barthes,CameraLucida, p. 3.